This works but why? Is it a bug for Unit Tweak Tool?
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Shyam KApr 28 '13 at 14:02

I believe it is a bug in Nautilus (the file manager), but I haven't been able to find a launchpad bug yet.
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senshikazeApr 29 '13 at 13:17

Couldn't find ubuntu-tweak-tool. I found unity-tweak-tool. Is that what you meant? It has the System/Desktop Icons tab, but switching it on (and off) didn't bring the wallpaper back.-(
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ChelmiteMay 3 '13 at 22:13

1

using 13.04, only that answer worked for me. this should be the accepted answer. way to go!
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Eliran MalkaJun 15 '13 at 12:02

Since none of the other fixes presented here work on 13.10 I decided to give this one a try. It neither brings the background back on 13.10, and now I'll have to go through the pain of reconfiguring. Note that one of the things this fix does is to activate data collection by Canonical and Amazon.
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Luís de SousaJan 4 '14 at 16:28

1

Working, but I had to activate that: gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.background active true
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euDennisFeb 4 '14 at 0:13

I have already tried disabling the file manager from handling the desktop and once i do that, I have no desktop, the whole setup just glitches out. My whole system constantly freezes until i re enable the file manager handling the desktop. And no rebooting does not help.
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user93768Apr 26 '13 at 21:04

1

This is Gnome specific, and may not apply for normal setup.
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david6May 19 '13 at 6:34

This fix does not work on Ubuntu 13.10.
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Luís de SousaDec 4 '13 at 19:02

Right click the desktop and untick "show desktop icons" or "show icons" does that fix the wallpaper display issue? If so, go through Gconf editor to the gnome desktop settings, set draw desktop to off, reboot, set it to on, reboot, and it should work. I had the same issue

login to gnome (u might get a white desktop at this point) and use gnome-tweak tool to turn off "Have file manager handle the desktop". (Tweak Tool > Desktop> Have file manager handle the desktop-OFF).

Same thing happened to me. To resolve I removed the Nautilus (with purge to remove the configuration files), and then installed again. Problems arose broken packages, but it was enough to remove them all and install again also. I ended the session and everything was normal.

I had this problem when I installed Ubuntu-Gnome 13.10. For me, in order to use a background, I can not use the settings as they just leave me a white screen. Instead, I choose any screen I want to use with Firefox. I right click on the image and choose to use as background. This actually works with the options for stretch, fit, tile, etc.